St. John's Church Clock - Hampstead, London, UK
Posted by: 
Metro2
N 51° 33.349 W 000° 10.201
30U E 696178 N 5715433
This church was built in 1823.
Waymark Code: WMD9TQ
Location: London, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 12/10/2011
Views: 4
The clock on this church is located above the entrance...just below the steeple. It has a black background and the hours are depicted in Roman numerals.
It seems this church has been the center of some significant local intrigues...and has a long tradition of missionary work throughout the world.
It's website (
visit link) indicates that the financier of the church died soon after it's completion:
"...so the first minister of St John’s was the Classical scholar William Harness, a friend of the poet Byron. After Harness moved on, a series of ministers remained for only a short time, before the copyhold of the chapel was bought by John Wilcox. Wilcox admired John Whitefield, a dynamic and influential preacher who was a key figure in the upsurge in Christian commitment in Britain and America in the 18th century. Like Whitefield, Wilcox was the son of a Gloucester inn keeper, who had then studied at Oxford on a scholarship. He saw in Downshire Hill the ideal place to carry on Whitefield’s legacy of preaching eternal life, forgiveness and relationship with God through Jesus. Unfortunately, Wilcox faced opposition from another local minister, Samuel White, because of both his humble origins and his lack of commitment to the state-established Church of England. White seems to have accused Wilcox of neglecting the two churches in which he already ministered. He also charged him with illegally officiating in a private chapel without the consent of the local parish minister. The bishop’s court ruled with White, but local feeling was with Wilcox. The poet John Keats, who was living just down the road at the time, wrote: “Here is
quarrelling with the world[;] he is in the wrong by this same token.”
International Connections
In 1872, some years after the Wilcox saga, Henry Wright became minister and increased the church’s involvement in international mission. Wright himself was associated with the Church Missionary Society (CMS), and often used missionaries as his curates when they returned to England. Since Wright, St John’s has been linked to ministries in Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Egypt, Borneo, Rwanda, India and South Africa. Today we have links to Christian work in East Asia, the Middle East, Sri Lanka and Uganda, and congregation members from India, Indonesia, Australia and Nigeria."